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June 22, 2021. The Improve Theatre of Criminality

A week ago I watched what was probably a thief walk across my patio and out my front gate. I live with Christine, my partner in all things, in a one story house above a street-level bookstore that occupies what had been the basement of the house. I was sitting inside facing the sliding glass door that leads to the patio when I saw a woman probably in her twenties walk across the patio from the back of the building while adjusting a very colorful large scarf that covered her head and most of her torso. She met my gaze and continued to walk purposefully but averted her eyes. Christine was near the front door and I asked her to confront the woman. By the time she got out the door the young woman was at our gate. When Christine called to her she pulled her scarf up to cover her face, said she’d been looking for a bathroom in the bookstore, opened the gate and left quickly, not returning to the bookstore.

I called downstairs and was told there was a person matching the description in the store. A short time later I got called back, saying the person was not in the store and a laptop was missing.

The store is long and narrow and a back door had been left open for ventilation. To leave through the backdoor the young woman needed to go through a curtain in an interior doorway and around a music stand that had been set up to keep people from using the backdoor. The office was open and is between the curtain and the back door and presumably that’s where the laptop had been.

Thinking about this whole strange thing, and assuming the young woman did take the laptop, it struck me how much like a pure act of improve theatre her action was. I should think her adrenaline must have been pumping when she went through the first curtain, not knowing at all what (or who) she would find. The action unfolded quickly– she saw a laptop in an empty room and a nearby door open to the outside. But what was outside the door was a concrete stairwell and she had no way of knowing what was at the top of it. And she went out and up those stairs.

She went out and up those stairs onto an unknown stage secure enough in her belief that she could adjust to anything that occurred. Man, that kind of faith blows my mind. She was ready to handle any line, any situation that came up. Probably she was well rehearsed. And is it such a big deal? I mean, I guess we each do this every day, each in our own timid or brash way. But, yeah, in this case she was breaking the law. If her act failed the consequences were likely way worse than the fallout from a bad review or a booing audience.

I guess in fact her act was a hit. It was a successful performance.

All the world’s a stage, sure enough.

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January 13, 2021. The world is too much with us. Indeed it is! It seems about all there is to do is to try to digest bite-sized pieces; that, or else be choked to unconsciousness. After the immersive theatre spectacle of Donald J. Trump’s “Disgruntled: Taking Back What Is Not Mine” on Wednesday, Jan 6th, Year of the Coming Biden, I haven’t been able to stop thinking a touch about the theatrics of the failed revolution. I offer these bites–

1) When we are able to attend theaters again in-person what will audiences want to see? One of the iconic pictures of the siege was of a young white man wearing a fur stole and a Viking helmet with horns, his face painted like an American flag. What successfully follows an act like that? And of course (shudder) the cast of “Disgruntled:…” may be on stage for years to come. What shares a stage with that show? Maybe audiences will flock to “Drivel, the Musical!” and maybe they’ll clamor for countless productions of “The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade.” Theater programmers of the future, those of you sincerely fishing for ticket sales, good luck.

2) Among the rabble in DC was a thirty-something-year-old white (needed?) man, according to Associated Press named Aaron, who stormed the citadel dressed in pelts, carrying a staff. This fellow was clearly failed by his Middle School and High School Drama Departments. I have no idea what he does for a living but I feel secure saying he is not involved in theater production. The energy he spent on costuming should have been exhausted by years of being valued and bitched about at a regional theater company somewhere. Wait, maybe he is a costumer and the Covid shuttering of theaters sent him to this despairing act. Uh oh.

3) The problem of writing is that it leads to the discovery that you know nothing for certain.

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January 5, 2021. The “blessing and wonder that is creativity?” Currently I am avoiding interacting with the three characters in a script tentatively titled Comedy. Jax, Ron, and Helen are on stage and we’re fifteen minutes into Act 1, Scene 1. Lunch is finished and Jax and Ron converse awkwardly about religion and humor at the table while Helen, in another time and place altogether, sits working on comedy routines stage left of them. I like them all and this seems like a comfortable moment. I almost don’t want to interrupt it, except that I have been working on Comedy for nearly four years now and we must find our way to a satisfactory conclusion. Satisfactory, unlike the three or four conclusions that have already been reached. It won’t happen without my participation, but I keep not participating, because creation is a struggle and evidently I am not up to it. No, yes I am! I will join them and we will proceed. It’s like a family holiday gathering, attendance is mandatory and it will conclude.

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December 25, 2020. My entry on Winter Solstice was a bit on the grim side so, now, a couple of things that make the days wonderful!

Beginning with Christine Deavel, an absolute godsend of a person to live with. Naturally, we scrape against each other once in a while, but the constancy of her intelligence, compassion, superb wit, and forthright presence help me stand up in the morning, walk around during the day, and sleep at night.

And there’s the major blessing and wonder that is creativity. It’s hard to talk about creating– it’s not easy and not painless to do but there is a breathtaking, and breathgiving, charm that comes from sitting down (or standing up) and producing something external and engaging, even if the engagement lasts about a moment and the artist is the entire audience. That countless others of us engage in this and that I benefit from being in their audience also takes my breath away and gives me reason to breathe. Whee!

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December 21, 2020. Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year.

A year filled with difficulties almost beyond, but not actually beyond, the imagination. Racism, despotism, a pandemic– our culture confronted with grand tragedies, any one of which could have dominated the year quite easily by itself. And now comes the other shoe.

What will the upshot of these three plagues be? What will the United States culture and the global human culture look like one year, two years, five years from now? Is despotism gaining more footholds worldwide? Is the white race, in power since the dawn of the nation, going to take its requisite exit from dominance gracefully or topple, being catastrophically destructive as it does? Will our distrust of science, and science’s own flaws, coupled with the wiliness and persistence of microbial nature force humans back to a smaller global footprint, a tribal footprint? Or eradicate us entirely like one of so many other species?

Selfishly– when will I be able to attend live theatre again? And when will I be able to comfortably browse a bookstore again?

Questions. Motherfucking questions. 2020, a year’s end overflowing with questions.